Canadian Rockhound: A Dogwood Bud

In 1967 the British Columbia Faceter's Guild took on a project of making a tiara to be presented to Miss P.N.E. [Pacific National Exhibition]. The members of the guild realized that many difficulties would be encountered, but that the final result would be most satisfying. The Dogwood motif was chosen and this was designed into a crown by one of our members, Miss Jacque Valentine. Fourteen stones were then distributed amongst the members to facet to size and shape.

Dogwood faceting design.

The shape I chose was triangular, which was to be the Dogwood bud. This apparently easy-to-cut stone turned out to be just the opposite, as all the books that I reviewed were cuts for a stone of three equal length sides, whereas mine had only two equal sides. Also, the pavilions shown in my available books were parallel cuts (the step cut method). None showed tapering cuts as in a brilliant for the pavilion or underside of the stone. The closest come to was a Cardinal cut, where the top or crown terminated at a table. So, why could we not carry this through to an apex for the pavilion? This sounded reasonable, so we tried it out first on the drawing board and found [that] by applying a bit of geometry and a little straight forward drafting, a lot of "trial and error" would be eliminated.

I started out with a piece of quartz, roughly shaped (preformed), and commenced to cut it to match the angles of the drawing. With some slight adjustments, it turned out that the "meets" did terminate at the common apex much better than I anticipated. This completed stone was then used as the Master to cut a Golden Citrine duplicate into the finished faceted bud.

Pavilion:

Cut the girdle (side) facets at 51 degrees indexing at 96-30-66.
Cut the corner girdles at 43 degees indexing at 2-28-31-65-68-94.
Cut the pavilion point facets (mains) at 41 degrees indexing at 2-28-31-65-68-94.
Cut the corner point facets at 41 degrees indexing at 48-16-80.
Polish the pavilion facets in the reverse order to cutting.
Polish the girdle.

Crown:

"Square" the stone at 90 degrees indexing at 96-30-60.
Cut and polish the table with your "45" dop.
Re-align your stone and cut the mains at 45 degrees indexing at 96-30-66.
Cut the reverse type facets (corner girdles) at 30 degrees indexing at 33-26-63-70 and at 29 degrees indexing at 5-91.
Cut the corners at 90 degrees indexing at 48-16-80.
Cut the corner facet points at 30 degrees indexing at 48-16-80.
Polish all crown facets in the reverse order to cutting.

Dogwood base

– Marion Wood was one of the faceters involved in the Centennial Tiara project. She is currently a member of The Fraser Valley Rock & Gem Club, and can be reached by internet e-mail at mwood@rapidnet.net, or by phone at (604) 853-2118.

Permission is given to freely reprint this article from the Canadian Rockhound for non-commercial and educational purposes, provided the author and the Canadian Rockhound are acknowledged, and that the website URL address of the Canadian Rockhound is given. The article may not be edited or rewritten to change its meaning or substance without permission from the author and the Canadian Rockhound. To contact the author, please use the e-mail address provided.

The preceding article was first published in the February 1968 issue (Vol. 12, No. 1) of the Canadian Rockhound, the official publication of the Lapidary Rock & Mineral Society of B.C., 1960-1980.